The Crew Motorfest has lost its mind, and we love it

Bear with us for a moment – we just woke from the strangest dream. There were RC cars whizzing around in Hawaii, doing backflips over buses. Street racers were lining up in heavily modded E46 M3s to go chase after flares. There were race tracks being assembled on the fly, parts dropping in ahead of racers from the sky. There was NASCAR, and a strange island full of loop-de-loops. Also our secondary school maths teacher was there, asking us why we’d turned up for an end of year exam without any clothes on.

Except, the thing is, we’ve gone back and double-checked, and except for the aforementioned scandalised pedagog it was no dream. It was in fact The Crew Motorfest’s year 3 lineup, a jamboree of deeply silly and hugely exciting content coming to the arcade racer in the coming months.

If we’re being really honest, we didn’t expect Ubisoft Ivory Tower’s game to be as good as it was at launch. The third Crew title had quietly bridged the gap to the imperious Forza Horizon series, a feat that previously seemed hugely unlikely. But the fundamentals had taken a massive step forwards: the visuals looked glossier, the content arranged into delicious little playlists. There was a paradigm-changing new 28-player Grand Race mode that immediately became the most fun you could have in the genre, and most importantly of all, the handling felt so much sweeter than it had in The Crew 1 and 2.

And that could very well have been the end of the story, except people kept playing The Crew Motorfest, which meant Ubisoft Ivory Tower could keep making more content for it, both as free updates and as part of its season passes. Gradually, over the next two years, Motorfest morphed into something more than a Horizon rival. Its playlists captured car culture in snackable segments, and its PvP racing became best-in-class.

Now as the Hawaiian open-world racer approaches year three of that post-launch content, you get a clear sense that it’s found its voice. And that voice is the lunatic shriek of a mad scientist.

Let’s start with Track Forge, a custom racetrack creator that’s arriving next March in season 9 (Year 3 content is split into three seasons). You pick a circuit type - traditional racetrack or stomach-troubling fantasy rollercoaster type-affair - and then start laying down individual modules of the circuit until you’ve got a creation you’re happy with, finishing up by publishing it online for anyone to try.

This is a great addition for two reasons. Firstly, because track racing has always been a relative weak point in this game. The circuits simply aren’t quite as satisfying to navigate as the roads, somehow too wide and lacking the undulations that give a circuit its challenge and character.

Track Forge is the fix. You can author your own circuits and publish them online, share a code with your mates and have everyone pile in to try it out. And yes, it’s possible to recreate real tracks to a level that makes them recognisable. The developers show us a rough version of the Monaco Street circuit they’ve been messing about with – we identify it within three corners.

Building these tools for user-generated content has been a big project for the team, working in an engine that wasn’t originally built with such a feature in mind. But the rewards could be massive - if players build a sufficient pile of fun creations, there’s potential to spotlight them and make the best tracks part of weekly events. Who knows – maybe even Grand Races.

There are some more traditional content updates on the way too, like the new BMW playlist and an additional street racing content drop. Just like the Ferrari playlist earlier in 2025, the former celebrates the manufacturer’s heritage over the decades and introduces new models to play with, like the new M2 CS with its squared-off kidney grilles.

The street racing content is a direct response to community requests for more vehicle customisation. As such, you can now adjust your car’s ‘stance’, or tyre camber, to a frankly absurd angle that you’d only see two types of driver employ: proud owners of JDM tuners, and people who took an unsighted speed bump at 45mph and are on their way directly to the nearest Kwik Fit. Branded alloys join the customisation suite too, along with an increased variety of arch and widebody kit options for certain vehicles.

We’re most intrigued by the new free race mode though, in which a flare’s shot up into the sky and racers make their own way towards it. No checkpoints, no set route, just racing as the crow flies.

This is certainly not a game that’s running short of ideas as it enters its third year, and the best example of that is the introduction of RC racing. Yep, remote-controlled cars, buzzing about, jumping into the air, exploring routes that full-size vehicles couldn’t fit down. Ubisoft Ivory Tower hasn’t detailed exactly what kind of events we’ll be racing these pint-sized stallions in, but a quick free drive session with one makes it instantly clear what a valuable addition they are. Racing around in such a tiny car makes you look at the world map in a totally different way. It’s Honey I Shrunk The Koenigsegg – you’re forging paths through back gardens and pedestrian alleyways, bouncing around and doing tricks over obstacles. Immense fun.

And ordinarily, that would be enough. But for Motorfest, apparently not. Also present in the Year 3 showcase video are a NASCAR collab teaser, and… a whole new island. Again. It’s too early for the developer to lift the veil on exactly what that NASCAR partnership will look like (we’re going out on a limb and guessing there’ll be some oval racing in Mustangs and Camrys) but it’s worth reflecting that for most live service titles, such a deal would be headline and lone new feature, three years in.

Having introduced the island of Oahu to kick off Year 2, this game’s made a bit of a rod for its own back. Anything short of a new island is bound to feel a bit low key by comparison, so… they’ve chucked one in for Year 3, too.

Rather than another chunk of sensible geography, though, this time it appears the map’s expanding with the inclusion of a fantasy landscape full of loop-de-loops and impossible layouts designed with pure driving enjoyment in mind.

It’s easy to be cynical about live service games, isn’t it? All the battle passes, the £7.99 dance emojis, the stagnation of the core experience. So it’s always worth shouting about the games that make a real effort to do things differently. It’s clear that The Crew Motorfest still has a head full of creative ideas and a willingness to experiment, and three years into its lifespan, that’s worth celebrating.

The Crew Motorfest Year 3 starts now, and is available on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC.